The science behind media placement

Although I am no neuroscientist, I am fascinated with the human brain and how human behavior impacts society, the industry and media campaigns.

With the ongoing evolution of consumer media habits, the ability to define the role of each channel in today’s marketing mix has changed significantly.

Championed by the proliferation of emerging channels (mobile, social etc) and the abundance of buzz terms that accompany them (big data, integrated content etc), there are now more options than ever to connect and resonate with an audience.

The communication industry has always been about that – communicating, and as the number of avenues to get the message across increases, it becomes imperative to be able to connect with an audience while they are still receptive to our message.

Now this next part is where it gets really interesting. As science has progressed there have been emerging schools of thought that have provided insight into how the human brain works, how it has evolved and how it makes decisions. This has been accompanied with the relatively new sociological field of behavioural economics and a term called “heuristics” – which is a theory that identifies how problems are solved and decisions are made. There is a lot of information on the internet about these things and several books that specifically discuss the research into behavioural economics and neuroscience.

It is obvious to see the benefit in being able to put a science to how people make decisions. Not only for the evolution of society – but also from a communications point of view. Understanding the processes that occur when people are receiving messages and how these messages impact them is becoming more common as science progresses. In the media industry we are continually asking;

Is it more effective to be in one media channel than the other?

What time of day is more effective to connect with the audience?

Is there a time of week where our product is more desirable to the consumer?

The more information, analysis and insight we have into the above questions – the more we can share with our clients – which is a really exciting prospect.

The ability to couple this with the already highly fragmented and diverse media mix and data analysis and insight generation we can gain from this knowledge means it is a fascinating time to work in the media industry.

There is no doubt in my mind as science and consumer behaviour progress, the ongoing evolution of our industry will lead to some very innovative work, campaigns and results.

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